7.  Beyond Meditation

I decided that first is was going to be necessary to purify my body, and that in itself was quite a battle because my tastes had been carefully conditioned.  But after battling with my senses I was able to undertake a series of fasts, the longest of which lasted for ten days.  This demonstrated to me the change that was possible in the clarity of my own thinking and a tremendous improvement in my own physical well-being.  I then decided to do something that I had been thinking of, on and off, for years, and that was to go to India.  But my business activities had never allowed me the total freedom of going without a timetable, and I knew deep within myself that unless I could go, determined to stay as long as I needed to discover whatever I was seeking, that it was a waste of time.   Once you have a deadline you are always in a hurry and this fact alone, at least for me, made it impossible to go to India with the freedom to seek out whatever it was my curiosity seemed unable to ignore.  Finally I was able to detach myself from my possessions.

It was not necessary to give them up in the literal sense, but it was necessary to give them up in the sense of being possessed by them.  Once we detach ourselves from our possessions we are free of them.  They no longer own us.  We, for the first time, own them.  We are no longer the slave to money.  We have mastered it.  It's not an easy point to reach.  It is probably the most difficult because we are haunted by insecurity.  We are fearful of the future, and this fear keeps us in bondage.  But finally I got on a plane with the determination never to return to the West unless I found what I was seeking.  I knew vaguely that all I was doing was taking my physical body to a distant land, and that really my search was an inner one, not an external search, but that maybe in some mystical way the actual change of vibrations in a culture totally different than anything I had ever experienced would unlock the barrier that I was trying to batter down.  Before going to India I fasted and meditated.

I got on the plane in Los Angeles and during the thirty-two hours it took to reach India I continued my fast because I wanted to prepare my body for a complete change in food and thereby conserve my energy so that my body would not be susceptible to all the disease I had been told existed on the Indian continent.  Consequently, during my entire stay in India I did not suffer any illness of any kind.  In fact my body grew stronger and stronger and although I had taken a little kit bag of all the best medication, including penicillin and antibiotics, I never once had to use it personally although I did use it on behalf of the other members of the group who picked up some of the various viruses that are so easily contracted in India where the sanitation is somewhat less than what our systems are used to in the Western world.

When I arrived in India, my first reaction was to get back on the plane.  It was a cultural shock of such magnitude that I found it hard at first to even comprehend and I am speaking, of course, of when one leaves the major cities and goes into the villages which is the same as going back five thousand years in time.  It took me several months to adjust to the change in vibrations that I felt all around me.  It is rather like being in a movie where everybody, except yourself, is in slow motion.  Time does not seem to exist.  If you met a stranger, he would talk to you as long as you wished to talk.  If you asked for directions, someone would volunteer and go for miles out of his way, without any thought of monetary reward, to help you find whoever you are looking for or wherever you want to go.

Slowly but surely, in the most isolated areas of India, my values and consciousness started subtly to change.  The western mind is so caught up with viewing everything on a material level and judging everything from appearances that it is extremely difficult, at least it was for me, to shake off my attitudes and my indoctrination's.  But slowly one starts to see everything differently and to hear things differently, to realize that men are what they are inside, instead of judging them from their external appearances.  Surplus weight fell away and my body started to get lighter.  It was easier to recognize the subtleties of the ego, and to understand the need for discernment and to allow one's feelings, as well as one's thinking, to come into balance.

We have been told, at least in many of the eastern books, that when we are ready to find a teacher one will appear and there are many teachers, or proclaimed teachers, in the form of Gurus throughout India.  More and more Gurus are starting to appear in the west.  I discovered that most of these teachers seemed to me to be caught up in their own subtle game.  It was possible sometimes to question them openly and to evaluate their answers for the ring of truth but it is dangerous because many of the teachers have the ability, through their conservation of energy and knowledge, of exploiting one's auto-suggestion and attempting to turn one into a perpetual follower by giving them only scraps of information and not really enough to free one from relying constantly on their presence.  This is how perpetual followers seem to be manufactured.

A really sincere and genuine Guru will tell you immediately that he is simply a channel, a reflection of your own self, on whatever level of consciousness you are caught on, and that all he can do for you is to help bring you to whatever level of consciousness he has obtained, through his own inner work and self-discipline.  When he has done this, he will acknowledge your progress and release you.  The many warnings of wolves in sheep's clothing are valid, and it is important if one even temporarily surrenders his mind to a Guru to always maintain an independent witness of one's own intuition who sits and judges and decides.

The true Guru is within yourself.  One must, however, be careful because the line between flowing and hearing the teacher and cynicism is very fine and it is difficult to recognize guide posts or cross-reference points.  This is why it is wise to talk to many different Gurus and not blindly follow one.  Instead, be like a bee gathering honey from any available flower.   Sooner or later you will find somebody you can trust. 

All Gurus will tell you that you first must learn how to meditate.  This means that you have to sit quietly with your back straight, in an upright chair or, if you can, in the lotus position.  In the beginning do this for twenty minutes in the morning and evening.  Unless you do this, no real progress is possible.  The body, you will discover, attempts continually to change the good intentions of the will.  I discovered, as a restless westerner, that the only way I could force myself to sit quietly for an hour was to set an alarm clock, and absolutely refuse to move my position until the clock went off.  This proved to be one of the most difficult things I had ever undertaken, ridiculous as it may sound to somebody who is more passive.  First, when you sit quietly, take ten very deep breaths slowly.  Hold the breath in for a few seconds and then slowly release it.   This has the effect of calming the body down, making it easier to sit quietly, and slowly but surely bringing it under control.  If you take twenty deep breaths, it is even better.

It is better to attempt this before you eat, because eating requires a great deal of energy and it is more difficult to sit in meditation when the body's energy is using itself digesting and moving the waste material out of the stomach through the body.  Loss of energy is one of our greatest problems.   We use up energy every time we speak and most of our speaking is unnecessary.   However, the body enjoys talking just as it enjoys eating and I have always believed that the success of Wrigley's Gum and Bell Telephone are due to the fact that the jaws like to be in constant motion.  If you doubt that it is difficult spending a day in silence, try it.  In fact, try spending an hour in silence.  Talking uses up energy and you need the energy to raise your consciousness.  The Guru or Indian holy man seldom does any physical actions.  He sits quietly in meditation for hours at a time, he does not indulge in sex, which in turn builds up a tremendous amount of energy, nor does he even think of sex, which in turn uses energy.  It is this accumulation of energy which the Guru radiates and which in itself unconsciously draws many women disciples to him.  The Guru uses the energy to enhance meditation and to experience new states of consciousness which simply cannot be achieved by those who lack energy and lack the secrets of accumulating it.

Recently the word 'Kundalini' has started to appear more and more often in the west.  There are now Kundalini institutes and lectures on the Kundalini taking place throughout the western world.  The Kundalini, or in eastern terms, the coiled serpent, rests at the bottom of our spinal chord.   This is the energy source in all mysticism and Yoga and is filled with ways of realizing this energy.  The Indians always meditate in the lotus position with the legs bent under the body.  One is actually sitting on the left heel, which is slightly behind the genital organ, thereby closing off the anal opening and cutting of unnecessary energy to the lower part of the body.  In the course of time, by increasing the purity of our thoughts, and meditating on a single word or sentence, additional energy is moved up through the spinal chord into the brain, creating higher quality energy which expands the mind and increases consciousness.  Such is the road to enlightenment.

The knowledge of how to arouse the Kundalini cannot be imparted by teaching alone; it can only be imparted by experiencing.   This alone is the basic teaching of all mysticism and was used since the dawn of recorded history.  In fact, some Egyptian statues show the Pharaohs sitting with straight backs on their thrones with various types of head ornaments that show what appear to be bumps on the top of the ornaments, indicating the expanded cosmic consciousness possible through the arousing of the Kundalini through meditation.

When one meditates, he should concentrate his energy on the centre of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.  The room in which he is sitting should be dark, and he should concentrate on one word, which as I said, could be your name, God, or love.  Only by experiencing what happens after a few weeks of meditation can one begin to understand any of the Eastern teachings.   There is a great deal of difference between having knowledge and having understanding through experiencing knowledge, just as there is a great deal of difference in having energy that you allow to become negative and turning the energy into a creative flow.  Whenever you criticize mentally or express the criticism, it is negative energy flowing.  You can direct the negative energy positively, with discernment and control and it will change your state.  This requires self-control because the will is only able to generate and direct energy and needs control, and the stronger the will and self-control, the greater the accumulation and the more positive the direction of energy.

Meditation through calming down the body and cooling it out is a means of increasing energy.   Just keeping the eyes closed conserves energy and increases concentration.  Two hours of meditation will refresh the body more than ten hours of sleep, and will revitalize the body as well as slowing down the aging process, thereby giving the body new energy and new life.   People who meditate daily are much quieter and more centered than those who do not meditate.  They are also much more decisive because there are not the continuous inner activities which leak out energy.  Meditation brings the body into a one-pointedness and harmony that simply cannot be obtained any other way.  Slowly but subtly it changes the vibratory level, creating more control over one's own thought process.  As one obtains new energy, which also depends on the increased purity of one's thoughts, one begins for the first time to evaluate the bondages of indoctrination, our attitudes, our habits, and our personalities.  This is the bringing into balance of man's spiritual and material nature, which is the quality with which we are faced.   As we bring this balance into focus, we begin to realize many things that had previously escaped our conscience.

Many of today's western youths have turned to the use of drugs which have the result of creating rushes of energy, and they have, for brief moments, experienced insight and indeed, spiritual revelations, of man's duality.   But the mind is like a puncture-proof tire.  Drug-released energy breaks through and shows wonders that transcend the rational mind, but once the drug effect passes, memory fades and man returns to that level of consciousness he had before taking the drug.  Drugs give simply a glimpse over the wall of one's potential.  They cannot keep a man perpetually high, but they can tantalize him with his untapped potential and let him know in the course of time that only through his own self-discipline and effort can he develop the energy necessary to keep himself perpetually high.